PHL220 Theory of Knowledge, past assignments



Outline
Our readings and assignments will follow this rough course outline:
1. Plato
 2. Descartes's Meditations, 1-3.
 3. An interlude on theological arguments.
 4. Descartes's Meditations, 4-6.
 5. Hume
 6. Berkeley
 7. Kant
 8. Science: The Deductive Nomological Method
 9. Quine and Ullian
 10. Lyotard and postmodernism

Past Assignments
1. Plato

1 September: read the selection from Plato's Republic, The Allegory of the cave. This is on e-reserves. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What do the people chained down signify?
  • What do the shadows signify?
  • Why do the people who are chained dislike the man who breaks free?
  • What do the world inside the cave, and the world outside the cave signify?
  • What do light, and the sun, signify?
  • Given your answers to these questions, what does Plato seem to be saying about the nature of the world we experience through our senses?

2. Descartes's Meditations, 1-3.

3,8 September: start Descartes's Meditation I. Finish Meditation I by the 8th. As you read, ask yourself:
  • What is Descartes goal in these meditations?
  • What is his method to reach this goal? That is, what will he do to try to accomplish his task?

8 September: Descartes's Meditation II. As you read, ask yourself:
  • What does Descartes discover he can be certain of?
  • What are the features of thought?

10 September: Descartes's Meditations III. As you read, ask yourself:
  • What is Descartes argument for the existence of God? Can you summarize it?
  • What do you think "objective reality" is?
  • Why does Descartes think that his idea of God is innate? What does that prove?

3. An interlude on theological arguments.

13 September: read the selection from Anselm and the selection from Pascal on the www lectures site.


4. Descartes's Meditations, 4-6.

17 September. Optional: read the selection from Paley linked to the www lectures site. Required: Descartes's Meditation IV. As you are reading, ask yourself:
  • What is a judgment? (Or: what is its relation to will and understanding?)
  • What is the will?
  • Do we have as much understanding as God?
  • Do we have a will like God's?
  • How do the nature of human will and understanding explain error?

20 September: quiz 1.

22 September. Descartes's Meditation V. As you are reading, ask yourself:
  • What kinds of things exist independently of my mind and God?
  • How do I know that they exist independently?

24 September. Descartes's Meditation VI. As you are reading, ask yourself:
  • What reasons do I have to believe that my body and mind are independent substances?
  • What is the relationship between the mind and the body?
  • What do you think Descartes would say about the nature of, say, a dog? Does it have a mind?

27 September. Read the first 15 paragraphs from the selections on ereserves from Berkeley's Of the Principles of Human Knowledge. Ask yourself as you read:
  • What kinds of things does Berkeley say there are?
  • Are objects separate from the mind? That is, does he allow for an appearance-reality distinction of the kind we found in Descartes?

6. Hume
29 September: Read sections I and II of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Section I is a kind of stylized apology for doing the kind of philosophy which he is about to do, and not particularly interesting to us as epistemologists. Section II is more important and introduces key distinctions. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What are the 2 kinds of philosophy? Which is Hume doing? What are the benefits of the kind of philosophy that Hume will do?
  • What are the 2 kinds of perceptions of the mind?
1 October: Read sections III and IV part 1 of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What are the three ways in which we associate ideas?
  • What are the two kinds of knowledge that there are? (This is important!)
  • What distinguishes the two kinds of knowledge that there are?
  • Hume argues that all reasoning about matters of fact is based upon what?
1 October: Quiz 2.

4 October: Read sections IV part 2 and section V Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. While reading, ask yourself:
  • How is it that we reason about matters of fact?
  • What is the inference we make about the past and future, based on our experience?
  • What is the principle that leads us to believe in cause and effect?
  • What is belief, according to Hume?

6 October: Read sections VI and VII of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

11 October: Read section VIII part 1 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Part 2 is optional. Here, Hume is concerned with the profound question of whether we are free or not. Please note something important: in this section and the following sections, he will now use the term "necessary" as he has explained it previously. That is, after first denying there are necessary connections, he redefines what we mean by "necessary connection," and he will now continue to talk of necessary connections. While reading section VIII, ask yourself:
  • Does Hume believe that we have fixed agreement on the meaning of all the terms we use in philosophy? What about the terms "liberty" and "necessity"?
  • What does Hume mean by arguing there is great uniformity in the actions of humans?
  • How does Hume define "liberty"?
  • How does Hume use this definition to address the problem of whether we are free or not?

11 October: quiz 3.

13 October: Optional: read section IX through XI. Required: read section XII of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

15 October: Kant. The preface is optional. Required is the introduction, pages 41-48. This is on e-reserves. For the first several pages, they put the first edition text below the second edition text, so that you can look at both. You need only read the second edition text, which is on top. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What is the role of knowledge in experience?
  • In waht sense might our faculty of knowledge be involved in experience?
  • What is Kant's precise definition of a priori?
  • What is the criterion of the a priori?
  • What examples of a priori judgments are there? What besides math does Kant offer?
  • What mistake does he claim that Hume made?
  • What are some examples of things of which we have knowledge but no experience

18 October: Kant, introduction, sections IV and V, pages 48-55. This is on e-reserves. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What is an analytic judgment?
  • What is a synthetic judgment?
  • Which are judgments of experience?
  • What is a synthetic a priori judgment?
  • What sciences contain synthetic a priori judgments? Give examples of such judgments?

20 October: Kant, introduction, sections VI and VII, pages 55-62. Review. This is on e-reserves. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What is the general problem of pure reason?
  • What questions must be answered to address this problem?
  • What is a "critique of pure reason"? With what is it concerned?
  • What is transcendental knowledge?

22 October: midterm exam. Questions can be any questions from reading questions. Other guiding questions can include:
  • Define, describe, and explain how at least one philosopher we read advocated:
    • Rationalism
    • Empiricism
    • Ontological Idealism
    • Foundationalism
  • Define, describe, and give an example of:
    • Skepticism
    • a skeptical solution
    • a priori judgments
    • a posteriori judgments
    • synthetic judgments
    • analytic judgments
    • synthetic a priori judgments
  • Describe the allegory of the cave. What do the different elements of the story represent? What role do the Forms play in this story? Explain how it coheres with Plato's idealism.
  • Describe Descartes's foundationalist project. How does he motivate it? What are the two undoubtable propositions that he discovers (in Meditations II and III)? What kinds of things follow from them? That is, as a foundation, what kinds of claims follow from them?
  • Why does Descartes have a special problem explaining error (after Meditation III)? How does he explain error?
  • What is Descartes proof of the existence of God given in Meditation III? I mean the argument referring to the reality in a thing. Careful: you must reconstruct a coherent and accurate version of his argument, and explain each step.
  • What are the two kinds of knowledge for Hume? How do we recongize them? Give examples of each. How does this distinction lead to problems like the problem of induction? Kant introduces two different ways to categorize knowledge. What are they? What are the three kinds of knowledge that he claims there are? How does this erase Hume's problem of induction?

22 October: Midterm exam. Here is the grading key that explains how I graded the exam.

8. Science: The Deductive Nomological Method

27 October: review online lecture notes.

9. A Revised and Anti-Realist Science: Quine and Ullian

29 October: read chapter 1 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief.

1 November: read chapter 2 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief.

3 November: read chapter 3 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief. While reading, ask yourself:
  • What must we do, according to Q and U, when a prediction proves false? (That is: consider the difference between their coherentist account and standard deductive nomological method.)
  • What is an observation? What is an observation sentence?
    • 5 November: read chapter 4 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief. While reading, ask yourself:
    • What forms or notions of "self-evidence" do Quine and Ullian identify?
    • Do they believe there is any firm notion of self-evidence?

    8 November: read chapter 5 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief. While reading, ask yourself:
    • What does language do for us, according to Q & U?
    • What are some strategies to check on testimony?

    10 November: read chapter 6 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief. While reading, ask yourself:
    • Can we, according to Q&U, construct science and other rich forms of knowledge wholly from self-evident truths? If so, how?
    • What is a hypothesis, according to Q&U?
    • What are the five virtues hypotheses may have?

    12 November: Randi documentary.

    19 November: read chapter 7 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief. While reading, ask yourself:
    • What is "grue"? What is the new paradox of induction that it gives rise to?
    • Can you explain the "meta-induction" problem that suggests I will live forever?
    • What is a "projectible trait"?
    • What is, and how do we use, "analogy"?

    22 November: read chapters 8-10 of Quine and Ullian, The Web of Belief.

    10. Doubts about Scientific Method: Lyotard and postmodernism

    29 November: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition sections 1-3. While reading, ask yourself:
    • What is Lyotard's working hypothesis?
    • What does he seem to mean by "postmodern"?
    • What are some of the predicted effects of the computerization of many aspects of our economy? (This was writtin 1979 -- how right did Lyotard get it?)
    • What is a language game? What are some examples? Which language game characterizes science?

    1 December: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition sections 4-7. While reading, ask yourself:
    • What are the two traditional descriptions of society? What are the two different views of knowledge they give rise to?
    • What is the distinction between learning and knowledge?
    • What are the five features of narrative?
    • How does scientific discourse compare regarding these same five features?

    1 December: here are some questions to consider when studying for the final.
    • How does Kant claim to solve Hume's problem of induction? A proper answer to this question must also answer: what are the two kinds of knowledge for Hume? How do we recongize them? Give examples of each. How does this distinction lead to problems like the problem of induction? Kant introduces two different ways to categorize knowledge. What are they? What are the three kinds of knowledge that he claims there are?
    • What is the deductive nomological method? Describe it carefully. Use an example hypothesis to illustrate the method. What complication does the Quine-Duhem thesis add to the method?
    • Could Uri Geller really bend those spoons with his mind? Treat this as a problem in scientific reasoning. First, how might we apply the DNM with falsificationism to test a hypothesis like, I think he bends the spoons beforehand? Second, how might we compare a theory like, 'Geller bends the spoons beforehand', with an alterantive like, 'Geller has supernatural powers over silverware'?
    • What do we mean when we say a hypothesis is unfalsifiable? Give an example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis. What is the problem with such a hypothesis?
    • What are the virtues that we use to distinguish between theories? Explain them. Illustrate with an example if you can.
    • What is the new problem of induction? (This is the problem of "grue" emeralds.) What kind of challenge is it meant to be for induction and scientific reasoning?
    3 December: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition sections 8-10. While reading, ask yourself:
    • According to Lyotard, how has legislation mirrored the development of science?
    • What are the two historical forms that have arisen to give a place to knowledge?
    • What is a "grand narrative"? What does it mean to say it is "dead"?

    6 December: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition sections 11-12. While reading, ask yourself:
    • What are the logical discoveries that Lyotard believes support his claims about the end of grand narratives?
    • What role does money play in the legitimation of science?